The Habitation of the Blessed - Catherynne M. Valente [122]
They came, endlessly, even the apes of the high hills, who communicated by signs that the true masters of the world were the bamboo forests that thought and whispered, and they owed nothing but service to them, who fed and sheltered their favorite children. Even the cameleopards, who said: You are not worthy to hear it.
And John refused a scribe, even me, but wrote these all down himself, in his cramped, tiny hand. And those who shared their tales, he rewarded with words of his own, which none of us understood. He named them abbots and dukes and marshals and viscounts, counts, marquises, and bishops, deacons, and cardinals. One of the apes he called a proto-pope, one of the gryphons an arch-pope, and once John had gone to rest himself with wine and blackbulb, the delegations traded these words like coins, and mixed them all up entirely. But in John’s presence they behaved as though they were very honored by them.
The kingship of John consisted of a wild mating with his blemmye wife and a wild writing of a thing which none of us read. As long as he worked upon it, I reasoned, he could not devise methods of sending that letter, of bringing his world down upon us. But he seemed happy, and when I knew I was with child, I kept it secret for a year and more, to enjoy that quiet thing I knew and he did not. Blemmyae take five years to birth a child—nearly as fascinated with our many ways of reproducing as with our creation stories, John still kept himself mostly ignorant of my own rhythms, and so it came as a surprise. When I finally did tell him, he smiled at first, as a new father should. But later, as he considered all that had passed he grew silent and grave, and did not speak to me for days. At last he broke free of whatever oppressed him, knelt by me and kissed me several times.
“You must understand, Hagia, I never thought to give up my chastity at all. To have a child is witness to my impurity forever.” He shut his eyes. “But perhaps that is past, now.”
He smiled. And some weeks later, as a present, I showed him the mirror.
Anywhere you like, I said. Just think about it, and it will show you.
He stood for a long time, and nothing showed in the dark glass.
Finally, a flame. An orange spark, growing swiftly to a blaze that burned my eyes. A city burned in the mirror, red and black and white, and we heard screaming there. John stood perfectly still, watching a city with domes of dust and crosses of gold and chalcedony flicker by, watching its stony streets run rivulets of blood like the porches of a dozen butchers, watched horses clatter over altars and books burn like phoenix, curling black at the edges and never return. He watched it all burn, impassive. He watched bodies twist on blades, and horrors I cannot begin to record, having seen nothing like it in all my days. I knew that city not at all, but I mourned it, I mourned it, so far away, so far and so lost.
John stood with the drawn damask clutched in his white hand, and watched a sullen orange sun set on the city of dust, and his beard grew even in that moment, his scalp showed pink through his hair, and his spine became a bent scythe, until he was an old man in my sight, and he wept like a nursing mother.
[Hagia’s book perishes here. The red-violet mold defeated me, growing and devouring, sending out their lurid tendrils. No bulb rose up; I ate nothing. I felt only a sadness, an emptiness, as though I had been scraped clean by it all, and left with nothing. Though chapters follow, I will never know them. Pages turned instead to sludge and misery and spilled out over the table and onto my lap like a font of blood.]
THE SCARLET NURSERY
It is years, and they are grown.
I saw one of them in later days, dancing, his muscles straining with sweat, in service to a very lovely lady—the Lottery,